Feds adamant about passing pot legislation but timeline still hazy
With only three weeks to go until the Senate votes on Canada’s Cannabis Act, the actual date of legalization for adult recreational use remains up in the air, according to the federal government’s top marijuana official.
“The senate has agreed to have their vote on June 7. What happens after June 7 is unknown,” said Eric Costen, the director of the federal government’s Cannabis Legalization and Regulation Branch.
The goal remains to pass the bill sometime in the summer, said Costen, speaking at a Lift & Co cannabis industry conference in Toronto on Thursday. But there are multiple moving parts, which make determining exact dates a challenge, even as provinces, municipalities, and businesses try to roll out regulations and execute on business plans. “Should the Senate decide to propose amendments, then the bill goes back to the House for a vote, and then you end up in a situation of the bill being approved with amendments in the House, or if it’s not, it goes back to the Senate,” said Costen.
Once the bill does pass, there will be transition period “of two to three months” before legal sales actually begin, said Costen. Even then, legalization should be thought of as a process, he said.
“The full establishment of the supply chain, the full establishment of the retail environment ... the full array of products that will be available for sale, all of these things will evolve and emerge over time.”
At least one part of the timeline, however, is set in stone: edibles and cannabis-infused concentrates will become legal within a year of Bill C-45 becoming law.
The Liberal government has, over the past several months, remained adamant that C-45 will pass before the fall.
The government’s aggressive timeline has also encountered pushback, most notably from the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. It called for a one-year delay on legalization to address concerns about potential harm to communities as well as economic inclusion.
Municipalities, at least in Ontario, are also worried about C-45, according to Chris Friel, the mayor of Brantford and the chair of the cannabis task force for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
“We are not ready,” he said. “We don’t know what the rules are ... Nobody has been talking to us about how we’re going to be able to manage this.”